TNI: With both He-Man and Beastman selling out on the exact same day and just two days before Skeletor went on sale, this has left many collectors who had planned to get all three at the same time to try and save some money on shipping high and dry. Will Mattel be restocking sold out figures on their website, or once they are gone they are gone?

Mattel: When we knew we were getting close to selling out we posted messages on Matty’s Facebook and news pages to let fans know. We do have just a handful of He-Man and Beastman left which we are going to bring to the summer conventions to help spread the word, but other than these, once a figure is off of Mattycollector.com it will no longer be available. We will not be going back into production anytime soon. In time we will likely offer key characters like He-Man and Skeletor again, but we will change them up from their original release in terms of deco, packaging or accessories.


TNI: Is there any effort to get MOTU back on regular retail shelves by Mattel? Other companies have been successful with doing this with 80's lines. He-Man was such a profitable franchise for Mattel in the 80's combined with rumors of a possible movie one day, why Mattel can't convince retailers to try this line again?

Mattel: It is not that we are not able to convince retailers to take it, but rather MOTUC was designed from day 1 to be the flagship line of our online MattyCollector.com business and was always intended to be an online exclusive. It is possible in the future when there is new MOTU entertainment that we will look at bringing the line to retail, but when and if we do it will be in different packaging and with a change up in deco and or accessories to preserve the versions sold online for fans.


TNI: There were a few waves of DCUC figures, most notably wave 3 that had some serious quality issues (such as paint). The later waves seem to have moved in the direction of correcting this problem. Will there be any effort to go back and re-do waves like the 3rd one now that quality control seems to be more up to par?

Mattel: Unfortunately due to minimum production orders we will not be going back into production on past waves at this time.


TNI: With Hasbro's more articulated 3 3/4 Marvel line soon to hit shelves (which have noticeably more articulation than the current design used on the DCIH), is there any thought to adding more articulation to DCIH figures in the near future?

Mattel: As announced at SDCC in 2008 we will indeed be greatly enhancing the articulation of the Infinite Heroes figures in the very near future.


TNI: You have announced your plans for what you will have on hand at the NYCC in February, but Toy Fair is the week after. Will you have anything additional that is new for DC that won't be shown at NYCC?

Mattel: No. In fact we will have more product on display at NYCC than we will have at NYTF. Toy Fair is more of a show for the retailers who honestly do not need to see every single figure (they just need to get an understanding of the basic line architecture). Versus NYCC is a collector show and we wanted to make sure to have the latest and all of the newest figures for our fans at this public show.